Colonial Days in Old New York by Alice Morse Earle

The most important holidays of the early years of the colony were, apparently, New Year's Day and May Day, for we find them named through frequent legislation about rioting on these days, repairing of damages, etc. It has been said that New Yorkers owe to the Dutch an everlasting gratitude for our high-stoop houses and the delights of over two centuries of New Year's calling. The latter custom lived long and happily in our midst, died a lingering and lamented death, is still much honored in our memory, and its extinction deeply deplored and unwillingly accepted.

The observance of New Year's Day was, without doubt, followed by both Dutch and English from the earliest settlement. We know that Governor Stuyvesant received New Year's calls, and we also know that he prohibited excessive "drunken drinking," unnecessary firing of guns, and all disorderly behavior on that day. The reign of the English did not abolish New Year's visits; and we find Charles Wolley, an English chaplain, writing in his journal in New York in 1701, of the addition of the English custom of exchange of gifts: --

"The English in New York observed one anniversary custom and that without superstition, I mean the strenarum commercium, as Suetonius calls them, a neighborly commerce of presents every New Year's Day. Some would send me a sugar-loaf, some a pair of gloves, some a bottle or two of wine."

A further celebration of the day by men in New York was by going in parties to Beekman's Swamp to shoot at turkeys.

New Year's calling was a new fashion to General Washington when he came to New York to live for a short time, but he adopted it with approval; and his New Year's Receptions were imposing functions.

For a long time the New Year was ushered in, in country towns, with great noise as well as rejoicing. All through the day groups of men would go from house to house firing salutes, and gathering gradually into large parties by recruits from each house until the end of the day was spent in firing at a mark. The Legislature in March, 1773, attempted to stop the gun-firing, asserting that "great damages are frequently done on the eve of the last day of December and on the first and second days of January by persons going from house to house with guns and other firearms. " In 1785 a similar enactment was passed by the State Legislature.

In the palmiest days of New Year's calling, New York City appeared one great family reunion. Every wheeled vehicle in the town seemed to be loaded with visitors going from house to house. Great four and six horse stages packed with hilarious mobs of men went to the house of every acquaintance of every one in the stage. Target companies had processions; political bodies called on families whose head was well known in political life. The newspaper-carriers brought out addresses yards long with rhymes: --

"The day devoted is to mirth, / And now around the social hearth / Friendship unlocks her genial springs, / And Harmony her lyre now strings. / While plenty spreads her copious hoard, / And piles and crowns the festive board,"

etc., etc., for hundreds of lines.

The "copious hoard" of substantial food, with decanters of wine, bowls of milk punch, and pitchers of egg-nog, no longer "crown the festive board" on New Year's Day; but we still have New Year's Cakes, though not delivered by singing bakers' 'prentices as of yore.

May Day was observed in similar fashion, -- by firing of guns, gay visiting, and also by the rearing of maypoles.

A very early mention of a maypole is in June, 1645, when one William Garritse had "sung a libellous song" against Rev. Francis Doughty, the preacher at Flushing, Long Island, and was sentenced in punishment therefor to be tied to the maypole, which in June was still standing. Stuyvesant again forbade "drunken drinking," and firing of guns and planting of maypoles, as productive of bad practices. I don't know whether the delight of my childhood, and of generations of children in Old and New England up to this present May Day on which I am now writing, -- the hanging of May baskets, -- ever made happy children in New York.

There was some observance in New York of Shrovetide as a holiday-time. As early as 1657 we find the sober Beverwyck burghers deliberating on "some improprieties committed at the house of Albert de Timmerman on Shrovetide last. " As was the inevitable custom followed by the extremely uninventive brain of the seventeenth and eighteenth century rioter, were he Dutch or English, these "improprieties" took the form of the men's parading in women's clothes; Pieter Semiensen was one of the masqueraders. Two years later the magistrates were again investigating the "unseemly and scandalous" celebration of Shrovetide; and as ever before, the youth of early Albany donned women's clothes and "marched as mountebanks," as the record says, just as they did in Philadelphia and Baltimore and even in sober Boston. We find also for sale in Beverwyck at this time, noisy Shrovetide toys -- _rommelerytiens_, little "rumbling-pots," which the youth and children doubtless keenly enjoyed.